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Friday, July 31, 2015

Political Cartoonists Are Our Canaries

In his column for the Daily Nation, Peter Mwaura, the paper’s
public editor, has on more than one occasion taken issue with my cartoons. In
his latest offering, he accuses me of being unethical, of contravening both the
law and the editorial policy of the Nation Media Group, as well as malice for the above cartoon that situates a defiant Moses Kuria in President Uhuru Kenyatta’s pocket
shortly after he was caught on camera telling armed youth to attack critics of the National Youth Service. Mr Mwaura believes that including the President’s name in
the image is the equivalent of “dragging the name of an innocent friend or
acquaintance in an act or charge of crime”.

Mr Mwaura appears to premise his piece on the complaint of
one reader. It is important, at the outset, to note that I welcome criticism of
my work. It is always humbling when someone takes the time to critique and
offer feedback. Not for me the “positivity” crap that seems to be all the rage
in the press and on social media, urging us to always wear our rose-coloured
glasses. However, the issues Mr Mwaura raises need to be addressed as they go
to the very heart of editorial cartooning and, more broadly, to the freedom of
expression.

Let’s dispense with the obvious. The cartoon was examined and accepted for publication by my editors at the Daily
Nation, and, as far as I know, the Media Council of Kenya, the body charged
with enforcing the code of conduct, has not raised any issue with it. So I
think I am probably safe on the counts of violating the Media Council of Kenya Act
and NMG policy.

But beyond that, it is important to distinguish editorial cartooning from reportage which seeks to render factually information to the reader and is constrained by the requirement of accuracy. The former belongs to the twin genres
of media commentary and political satire. Cartoons are about opinion and caricature. In
their paper, Censorship and the Political
Cartoonist, Dr Haydon Manning and Dr Robert Phiddian, both of Flinders
University, write that “cartoons are a part of opinion-formation in liberal
democracies that enjoy … a special licence to make exaggerated and comic
criticisms of public figures and policies. Cartoonists are employed by
newspapers principally to entertain readers and to provoke thought; often they
are the part of the paper least disciplined to an adherence to any editorial
line.”

Thus Mwaura is partly right when he says editorial cartoons
are no laughing matter. In seeking to make their point, cartoonists employ
biting satire and abandon fairness and objectivity. In 1988, the US Supreme Court, noted that “the
appeal of the political cartoon or caricature is often based on exploitation of
unfortunate physical traits or politically embarrassing events - an
exploitation often calculated to injure the feelings of the subject of the
portrayal. The art of the cartoonist is often not reasoned or evenhanded, but
slashing and one-sided.”

And make no mistake about it. Political cartoons will
offend. No one likes to be skewered or to see their favorite politician or
deeply held belief caricatured. Yet this is exactly what cartoonists should
seek to do. Not just reflect society’s beefs but challenge society itself and its most cherished institutions. A
good cartoonist, like a good journalist, does not pander to his audience. “No political cartoonist is worth his salt who misuses his
valuable space by drawinginoffensive, pretty pictures about the news,” wrote Scott
Long, an American cartoonist, in 1963. “A political cartoon is a weapon of
attackto be used against the evils and the follies of society. It
is potentially the strongestweapon in modern journalism.”

So when Mwaura demands that a
cartoon “[not] convey inaccurate information or offend good taste” he is asking
to neuter a medium which does not report the news, but comments on, distorts
and lampoons it. Such a prescription would destroy the soul of political
cartooning, reducing it to a series of anodyne, tasteless, valueless “pretty
pictures about the news”. However, a bigger issue is at stake. And it revolves
around the ability of the public to hold the powerful to account.

To do this, unfettered debate and
expression on matters touching on them must be encouraged. In a democracy, political
statements like “the government has failed” or “Jubilee is corrupt” must be
protected. If we were to require everyone saying such to provide proof beyond
reasonable doubt, public opinion, one of democracy’s most potent weapons, would
be eviscerated. Public figures have inordinate influence over our common affairs
and the cost of that is they will be exposed to greater public scrutiny. They thus can expect to relinquish, though not entirely, some of the protections enjoyed by ordinary
folks, hopefully compensating for that by growing extra layers of dermis.

One could therefore rephrase the issue thus: Is it wrong or
unethical to express the opinion that Uhuru Kenyatta (or his government) is
protecting Moses Kuria? When expressed that way, it becomes clear that the
challenge is not just to cartoonists, but to all within society. As Manning and Phiddian say, political cartoonists are the "

canaries sent down the mine shaft of public debate to discover how fresh the air is there, how safe for freedom of speech."